Simplicity Complicity - Part 3
Dialectical Peace
Where We Left Off
We began with a prelude, Back to the Storyboard, where we explored the significance of stories in shaping the human world and the future of our planet.
In Part 1, we introduced the dialectical tension between simplicity and complexity—a dynamic at play in every individual and within culture as a whole.
In Part 2, we traced how this tension has played out in modern history. We established that:
Modernism is biased toward simplicity—reducing Reality to simple, predictable components for the sake of control.
Postmodernism is biased toward complexity—exposing our entrapment in simplistic, subjective, socially constructed stories that fail to capture Reality.
We focused on the history of Western European thought, where the planet-conquering modern grand narrative finds its roots.1
The Limits of Modern Thought
Issues on Both Sides of the Culture Wars
Thus far in this essay, we’ve explored how neither modernism nor postmodernism offers a mature stance toward complexity. Both are biased in opposite directions in the dialectic between simplicity and complexity.
As established in Part 1, the relationship between story and Reality lies at the heart of human maturation. It has always been a fundamental dialectic for human beings to navigate as we work to make sense of the world around us. But our current historical moment brings this issue to a head—any mismatch between our stories and Reality will prove catastrophic. With the industrial genie out of the bottle, this question becomes more urgent than ever in known history. We must evolve quickly enough to match our newfound powers—or risk an evolutionary dead end.
Modernity embodies a pre-complexity attitude.2 It stems from complexity-blind 18th-century thinking that sought to reduce nature into equations and models—to predict, manipulate, and control the material world. But even as modernism surged forward—turbo-charged by abundant fossil fuels—the cracks in its grand narrative began to show.
Postmodernism emerged as a reaction to the dangerous naïveté of this overpowered, complexity-blind industrial civilization. Its critique is a harsh wake-up call in the nick of time, revealing the contradictions and delusions embedded in the simplistic stories upon which the modern world is built—stories that are irreconcilably disconnected from Reality.
The Cultural Impasse
Yet for modern society—still riding the industrialized momentum of its grand narrative of progress—this critique is indigestible. Though postmodernism grows increasingly ubiquitous in culture, it offers only critique—no alternatives—and remains largely unactionable.
The result? A widening cultural schism. Modernism insists on business as usual, while postmodernism deconstructs the simplistic ground under modernity’s feet, refusing to offer any alternative grand narrative in its place. What are the real-world implications of these extreme attitudes on the dialectic between simplicity and complexity?
Modernism empowers and encourages individuals and societies to act out an immature worldview—like arming toddlers with submachine guns, if you’ll forgive the horrific metaphor. Postmodernism, on the other hand, radically disempowers individuals and societies by confronting them with infinite irreducible complexity—and no tools to navigate it with.
Such is the impasse of the Culture Wars. We won’t be able to perpetuate modernity’s blissful ignorance forever, “externalizing” complexity out of sight and out of mind. But neither is a hollow postmodern stance much better, bringing no actionable alternative to the table.
The modern momentum won’t simply “stop” because we’ve deconstructed its delusions. Instead, with no course correction available, modernity will keep rushing toward its logical conclusion: the extraction and exhaustion of Earth’s remaining fertility and resources, followed by a desperate grasp toward the stars in a last-ditch attempt to extend its extractive logic toward mining asteroids and colonizing Mars.
The Sheer Necessity of Evolution
The solution lies not in mediating between modernity and postmodernity in search of some lukewarm middle ground that appeases both biases. We must dig deeper—into the developmental lapses that underpin them.
Only by confronting the immaturity underneath both paradigms can we metabolize our historical lessons and avoid repeating the same mistakes in new clothing. Our historical situation demands a more enlightened stance toward both stories and Reality.
Now, having set the stage—philosophically in Part 1 and historically in Part 2—we shift gears again to approach the developmental territory and the psychological, emotional, and cognitive maturation required to meet our moment of crisis.
The situation is clear. So are the stakes. We are set to approach the burning question at the heart of Part 3: What, practically, is required of us?
Part 3…
…Where we approach a High Resolution—a synthesis of the dialectic between low-resolution (simplicity) and high-resolution (complexity).
This synthesis forms an evolutionary meta-narrative—a mature stance toward both Reality and our stories about Her. Individuals who adopt this stance gain agency over their own destinies. Communities and societies that adopt it gain the ability to deliberately shape the future of the species.
Toward Synthesis
As established in Part 1, simplifications are not inherently problematic—stories are how we make meaning out of a situation and are essential for psychological coherence and stability. Is it even possible for human beings to live outside of stories?
Enlightened masters throughout history have shown us that humans can live in intimate contact with Reality. Yet even at the highest stages of realization, the great teachers—Yeshua (Jesus), Gautama the Buddha, as well as others—compassionately used narrative and parable to guide others toward better recognition of and alignment with the nature of Reality.
Human beings can enter states of consciousness that transcend story altogether. But later, they tell stories about these states. And while cultivating such states is essential for seeing through the constructed nature of narratives, how can such gifts spread without sharing? Words are a medium, but in a deeper sense, the true fabric of stories is meaning. Even silence conveys meaning.
So rather than lamenting our disconnection from some primordial, pre-narratival purity—or resenting our reliance on simplifications that fail to capture Reality’s fullness—we must rediscover how to use our simple stories wisely, in service of greater coherence with Reality’s complexity. To do so, we must become both better stewards of stories and better students of Reality.
No Grand Narratives!… Yet
At this point in history, proposing a single unifying grand narrative to get all of humanity on the same page is either naïve, totalitarian, or both. The postmodern condition—fragmented, incongruent, and pluralistic—keeps this goal out of reach. And yet, we still need stories to structure our paths forward. What kind of story could guide us through the unprecedented Time of Trouble ahead?
Not a simplistic shared story—but a story that moves us toward a shared story. Not one that denies the complexity of our moment, but one that metabolizes it. A story made to weave congruence from refined strands of plurality. This is the story for our unique moment.
East and West. North and South. Left and right. Spirit and matter. Our species has drifted so far apart that our stories seem irreconcilable. Like the postmodern thinkers, we present a meta-narrative that makes sense of all the disparate narratives. But where the postmodern meta-narrative resigns itself to fragmentation, a life-affirming meta-narrative will guide stories toward reconciliation.
This story straddles philosophical insight and the lived realities of psychological development. One cannot be expected to lift more weight than their body is trained to carry. Likewise, this story contains a kind of psychoemotional weight that requires preparation. And so, the path toward this new meta-narrative requires…
Dialectical Peace
Making peace with both simplicity and complexity is the prerequisite for any unbiased synthesis. It is the precondition, and out of it, the path toward synthesis flows naturally. But this peace is not a treaty to sign in some French palace. This kind of peace—peace with inescapable aspects of human existence—is something to cultivate and earn.
This essay's argument and framing are part of an ambitious project aimed at nothing less than reconciling humanity with itself and with Reality. This project challenges naïve modern ideas. One of these is the ideal of pure rationality, according to which humans can, or should, engage with ideas objectively on a purely rational basis. This ideal spawned the archetype of the philosopher as a disconnected intellectual in an ivory tower of abstract thought. Contrast this disassociated intellectual with the image of the sage. Not detached, but immersed—the sage exemplifies the most intimate and deliberate relationship of embodied presence with Reality. The first is unrealistic. The second is a Realist.
Humans are embodied beings, not brains in vats. Our whole nervous system is involved in our thinking process. Our embodied emotional state informs our thoughts, and our thoughts influence our emotional state in complex feedback loops. We have relationships with our ideas and are deeply invested in our stories. We are swayed by favoritism, biases, hopes, and fears. We explored this in a previous essay:
Thinking in Color established emotional intelligence as a prerequisite for free thinking. We refer to it as a foundational essay because we will repeatedly lean on its thesis moving forward. We will now extend its argument in our first step toward a synthesis of simplicity and complexity by discussing the emotional travails involved in the quest to properly perceive Reality.
Living with Complexity
Emotionally
At the heart of the matter lies the fear of the unknown. Even the fear of death finds the fear of the unknown at its source.
For human beings conditioned to perceive the universe as fundamentally unsafe, sticking to the familiar provides the only semblance of safety. For this reason, complexity scares people. And too much of it overwhelms them. Were we aware on a fundamental level that this is a safe universe, we would not shrivel from exploring its mysteries. Fear of a threatening Reality underlies simplicity-bias.
Under threat, human physiology operates in emergency mode. But being ‘jumpy’ causes one to prematurely jump to conclusions. Without the capacity to sit with the discomfort of the unknown, we collapse what we don’t understand into something we do—compromising truth in the process. Fear and curiosity are antithetical, each corresponding to a different mode of our autonomic nervous system.3 Can we stay calm in the face of complexity?
Thankfully, even those of us conditioned to perceive the universe as fundamentally unsafe can learn to steady both heart and gaze as we peer into the infinite depths of the unknown.4 What we are called to cultivate is emotional maturation, the capacity to self-regulate and grow into dependable competency throughout a wider emotional range.
Conquering the terror of the unknown and coming to terms with the limits of human knowledge go hand-in-hand with a release of the modern compulsion to base one’s sense of safety by seeking to control things that lie outside of one’s control. This fear-based compulsion can be said to have incarnated as modern civilization, a society arguably driven by fear at its core.
Epistemic Humility or Epistemic Hubris
It was said that Socrates was the wisest man in Greece because he lived in composed resignation to the limitations of human knowledge. This wisdom is antithetical to modern society, which must pretend to “know” to maintain societal stability. The modern masses are co-dependently entangled with institutions and overlords that keep up the act of having things “under control.” Both sides are complementarily complicit in keeping up this infantilizing charade. The systems modernism attempts to simplify into a controllable form in service of shallow, short-term predictability and safety are everywhere—from Earth’s entire biosphere and down to the individual’s body and psyche.
Making peace with complexity is a vote for humility and sanity over delusional hubris. Anyone undertaking such a journey is choosing a courageous path—moving past the veneer of safety provided by cultural narratives and social structures to confront sociocultural blind spots and contradictions. This move both requires and engenders emotional maturation.
To move toward complexity requires leaving the safe shores of familiar simplicity. We must learn to relax our grip on the stories that make us comfortable and complacent. It is essential to recognize that what may seem like a reckless leap from the safe pier of simplicity into the dark waters of complexity is not taken in order to drown in the unknown. Rather, we must learn to ‘swim’ through complexity to reach better ground when the familiar foothold beneath our feet—our personal and cultural narratives—begins to quake and crumble.
Intentional Emotional Growth
There is more to discuss about cultivating the emotional intelligence required for handling complexity (discomfort, the unknown, ambiguity, paradox, the liminal, plurality, etc.) than would fit in this short essay. The first important point to drive across is that emotional intelligence can be developed. Our hope lies in development. Emotional intelligence is not fixed at birth—some have it, and others don’t—it can be stretched and strengthened like any muscle.
Unlike playing tennis or driving a car, skills that are mostly practiced contextually, emotions are with us everywhere. On the tennis court or in the car—there they are. This means emotional intelligence can be cultivated at all times. This subtle development has to do with how we relate to our own experience. Staying mindful of our emotions is, therefore, transformational by itself by increasing our emotional self-awareness.
In difficult situations characterized by challenging emotions, by simply finding more calm around our emotional experience—shifting how we feel about what we feel—we cultivate self-regulation. In other words, cultivating emotional intelligence does not require a special book or course (those can help) and can be cultivated by simply living in a way that takes this into account. Frame every moment as a step on the heroic quest, and that it is. Even reading this publication, especially when it is challenging, develops emotional fortitude.5
Going one proactive step further calls for deliberate practices, such as proactively engaging with discomfort, uncertainty, and paradox. Each individual on this planet has a unique entryway based on their personal history and context; there are limits to how much the developmental journey can be generalized. That being said, reflective practices, such as mindfulness, journaling, and active listening, greatly accelerate the process.
Complexity, of course, is not only emotionally challenging. We fear we cannot handle complexity, and this fear might be somewhat justified. Even if we can stay emotionally steady as we approach it, simply approaching complexity is not enough—we need the skills to make the journey not merely doable, but actually worthwhile. To face complexity, we need a strong heart. To metabolize complexity, we need a powerful mind.
Cognitively
Fortunately, as we know from the field of developmental psychology,6 cognitive complexity—like emotional intelligence—can be cultivated (or allowed to atrophy).
Cognitive complexity refers to one’s ability to conceptualize and engage effectively with complex systems. It does not grow along a smooth gradient, but in discrete stages, each introducing a higher order of logic that builds upon the last. And while each person’s intelligence is a unique expression, cognitive development appears to unfold according to a universal logic of maturation.
Phenomena that seem incomprehensible at one stage become intelligible at the next. While the postmodern mindset often resists the hierarchical ranking of human capacities,7 such resistance, in this case, obscures the developmental nature of this hierarchy—one that does not pigeonhole people into deterministic categories. All humans, given the right conditions, can grow in their capacity to comprehend and navigate complexity.
As with emotional intelligence, the development of cognitive complexity deserves careful consideration. We touch on it here only in passing, as part of a broader thesis. Emotional maturity forms the foundation for healthy cognitive growth (see Thinking in Color) and must be understood in its proper relationship to general intelligence. Given adequate emotional stability, cognitive development can be cultivated through deep engagement with diverse perspectives, interdisciplinary inquiry, systems thinking, dialectical reasoning, and more.
A key capacity here is the ability to resist the urge to resolve contradictions prematurely. This skill interpenetrates both emotional and cognitive development, and is essential for dialectical reasoning and synthesis.
Because Reality is hypercomplex, developing cognitive complexity allows us to better understand Her. This growing capacity to relate to Reality on Her own terms marks nothing less than an increase in intimacy with Reality Herself.8
However, complexity forms only half of the dialectical picture. While it reveals the path out of simplicity bias, focusing solely on our capacity to navigate complexity can leave us developmentally lopsided. However complexity-savvy we become, we cannot match the infinite, fractal complexity of the Reality from which we ourselves emerged. For coherence, agency, and collaboration, we must rely on simplifying stories.
Which brings us to discuss…
Living With Simplicity
It may come as no surprise that our distracted, avoidant, attention-fractured, and artificially conditioned modern culture must learn to better face the true complexity of the universe. Yet we must also learn to make peace with simplicity. And while complexity can be scary, simplicity can be even more so. Why?
While complexity and Reality elude our limited human understanding and control, a narrative, on the other hand, is truly and fully a human creation. We do not only tell and listen to stories. We internalize them and live according to the frame they set. Story-weaving is meaning-making, which dictates decision-making. Storytelling, therefore, involves a tremendous amount of responsibility—one that modern culture treats callously and carelessly. Stories organize human perceptions and actions, from individuals to entire societies.
Coming to terms with the horrors of industrialized world wars, the decimation of the planet’s miraculous ecological equilibrium, the extinction of cultures and species of irreplaceable beauty, and the perpetuation of slavery into modernity in economic and subtler forms, postmodernism recoiled from narratival responsibility.
While the postmodern concern is understandable, what is the alternative? It isn’t clear what a human being “living outside of story” is. It is a hypothetical species of which we know nothing. Even the postmodernists who deconstructed narratives as artificial social constructs never transcended narratives and have been passionately telling their meta-narrative about the arbitrary nature of stories for a few good decades now. Consider yourself part of the species Homonarrativus. Our destiny is interwoven with our stories.
Narratival Responsibility
Avoiding examination of the stories that shape our world doesn’t free us from their grip. It only relieves us from assuming responsibility for shaping them, leaving that power in the hands of others.
Here lies another form of developmental stagnation. If simplicity bias underlies resistance to facing the complexity of Reality and the unknown, complexity bias and resistance to simplifying it into an actionable narrative mark an avoidance of responsibility over meaning- and decision-making.
Making peace with simplicity means coming to terms with the narratival dimension of human existence—and learning how to use stories responsibly. This calls for a deepening commitment to human existence and decision-making under conditions of uncertainty that human existence implies. This requires cultivating yang qualities: courage, assertiveness, commitment, and directionality.9 By refusing to choose a direction under conditions of limited knowledge, the complexity-biased are defaulting to the passenger seat in their own lives.
We must accept that our future is shaped by our stories and that these lie in our own hands. By failing to make peace with simplicity—with stories—we cannot acknowledge and take responsibility for the constructed nature of our own perception and the world that we create in its light.
The Existential Weight of Stories
Our culture is slowly, sluggishly, waking up to realize the significance of stories as an existential dimension of human life through postmodern thought. Still, this reckoning has not yet arrived at a mature position—such as the one we are now carefully building.10 The flaws of the postmodern meta-narrative make it indigestible—it is a purely deconstructive project. Though the postmodern critique rightly exposes the constructed nature of stories, it stops there, leaving culture disoriented and lost.
A meta-narrative that takes into account the constructed nature of stories and still wrestles with the lingering matter of how to construct them is what we are building toward—a step the postmodern thinkers could not take, as the culture of their time was not ripe for the task.
Those who are simplicity-biased confuse the map for the territory. Those who are complexity-biased, on the other hand, confuse the territory for the map. They have not made peace with the narratival existential dimension of human nature and refuse to acknowledge the obvious—we need maps. Making peace with simplicity means taking (or sharing) the responsibility for drawing maps—weaving stories fit for the situation we find ourselves in.
Peace with both simplicity and complexity is earned by walking distinct but interwoven developmental paths—cultivating emotional maturity, cognitive complexity, existential courage, and narratival responsibility. Given the scale and urgency of our moment, all this puts our generation in a historically unique position.
The Pivot Generation
In the future, a developmentally informed society may offer children sociocultural conditions for unimpeded growth. But that has not been the case for the children of modernity. Ours is the pivot generation—tasked with consciously rebuilding a frayed relationship with Reality. Our ancestors made dubious (though understandable) choices. Still, given our generation’s unprecedented access to knowledge—including the wisdom traditions and the insights of developmental psychology—we are uniquely positioned to take a dramatic turn in humanity’s plotline.
Modern culture harbors deep misunderstandings about human nature, intelligence, creativity, maturity, potential, and greatness. These assumptions are woven into the very fabric of our systems and institutions. But the truth is that while each human being is unique, we are all, universally, evolving beings. To meet the needs of the hour, we are called to re-empower ourselves by taking our developmental trajectories into our own hands. Accepting with compassion where we are, we can begin to chart a sensible path of maturation forward.
Rather than preaching lofty moral imperatives, our generation must recognize the practicable and actionable developmental imperatives that beckon forward.
The Developmental Imperatives
By failing to make complexity a home away from home, we limit our understanding of—and intimacy with—Reality. By refusing the power and responsibility of story-weaving, we abdicate our agency and surrender to fate, instead of crafting a destiny.
In doing either, we choose the innocence of youth, leaving adulthood—and its headaches—to others we somehow deem more worthy. Individually, such developmental stagnation may be a fair (if self-limiting) choice. But on a collective level, the consequences of shying away from maturation would result in cascading implications generations into the future—or worse, cut them short.
To become impartial dialectic mediators, we must make peace with both poles of the dialectic. These are the necessary preconditions for a mature synthesis of simplicity and complexity. And we are now ready to present that synthesis in…
Part 4—Coming Soon…
In Part 1, we introduced the dialectic of simplicity and complexity—two poles in tension within us all and in our culture as a whole.
In Part 2, we explored how this dialectic expressed itself in modern history.
Here in Part 3, we laid the developmental foundations for relating to both poles maturely.
The stage is now set for the conclusion.
In Part 4, we will present a synthesis of simplicity and complexity—a new meta-narrative. A developmental story of stories, fit to lead the revolution of evolution. This meta-narrative helps us navigate simplicity and complexity by establishing an optimal grip on story—not the clinging grasp of the modern grand narrative, nor the flaccid fumble of the postmodern meta-narrative. It offers a stance that balances humility and agency—a mature relationship with both stories and Reality Herself.
This meta-narrative will guide us toward the evolution and reconciliation of stories. It will help us take our right place—individually and collectively—in relation to the future and the cosmos.
Look forward to a synthesis that can liberate minds and shape the future in Simplicity Complicity - Part 4: The Grand Meta-Narrative.
Oversimplifications, of course, are not a modern invention. As a grand narrative aimed at simplification and control, modernism is the ideological culmination of a much older trend—traceable to the earliest empires of the Fertile Crescent. In this sense, modernism is not the root of “social evil”—objectification, simplification, and control for the sake of narrow goals—but merely its formalized conclusion and the face it currently wears.
General Systems Theory, chaos theory, complexity science, and systems thinking are recent 20th-century innovations. Some might attribute these developments to “academia” or “science,” crediting modernity with their insights. But this is a misunderstanding of modernity itself. These fields challenge many of modernity’s core assumptions—making them postmodern by definition. To apply them socially would require an overhaul of the modern social order beyond recognition.
As explored in polyvagal theory and its differentiation between the sympathetic versus parasympathetic modes of the autonomic nervous system. The sympathetic system—”fight or flight” mode—is the emergency mode of autonomic operation and is geared for quick action under threat. The parasympathetic system—”rest and digest”—should be our default operational mode when we are not triggered to perceive danger. In the parasympathetic mode, the mind is malleable enough to accommodate change. Because the perception of safety is subjective, those who perceive the universe as unsafe have as their default a sustained, low-level emergency mode.
In attachment theory, safe attachment is the style of relating to the world and others that is characterized by basic trust—the general sense that the universe is safe enough to explore. One’s attachment style is shaped in infancy as a function of one’s relationship with one's caregivers. Earned Secure Attachment differentiates those adults who were shaped with insecure attachment styles and were able to learn secure attachment in adulthood through healthy relationships and intentional transformative work.
High Resolution is a free read, not an easy read. This essay, for instance, deconstructs deep assumptions of both modern and postmodern culture. Modern and postmodern readers should find this challenging, at least to the extent that they are genuinely engaging with the text. But this difficulty is not without purpose—it is the responsibility of any post-postmodern writer to only open up the ground beneath their reader’s feet if they can land the reader on firmer ground (or help them take flight altogether).
In this case, we are referring to cognitive developmental models such as MHC (Model of Hierarchical Complexity) by Commons and Richards.
We will engage with this in the essay following Simplicity Complicity.
We follow David J. Temple’s lead (from First Principles and First Values), and Marc Gafni’s, based on the Hebrew wisdom tradition, that true knowledge corresponds with intimacy. In ancient Hebrew, the word for ‘knowing’—ידע, yada—also refers to an intimate union. In contrast, by simplifying another and relating to our simplification of them, we avoid intimacy by having a relationship with a mental model instead of the actuality of the other. We find it both appropriate and fruitful to use the same metaphors of intimacy toward others and toward Reality. This is one reason why we relate to Reality as Her and not ‘it.’
Yang, the white half of yin-yang, is correlated with the “masculine,” active aspect of Reality. It correlates with the order of a simplifying narrative. While Reality is everything and thereby encompasses both yin and yang, when juxtaposed with our simplifying narratives, She is associated with yin. This is another reason why, in this essay, we refer to Reality as She—the feminine yin. These distinctions can be safely ignored wherever they happen to offend “progressive” Western sensibilities.
Other individuals and groups are seeking such a post-postmodern position in what some refer to as the liminal web. Perhaps the most significant among these is the integral movement initiated by luminary philosopher Ken Wilber. However, these movements, even integral philosophy, are not yet as culturally influential as our historical moment demands, and the overwhelming majority of cultural discourse in the West still falls under either modern or postmodern paradigms.